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Barclays was one of several British banks involved in a scandal over Payment Protection Insurance, where consumers were signed up for inappropriate and expensive insurance products. That scandal has already cost Barclays hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation, and the investigators are looking into whether mis-selling may have occurred elsewhere. Earlier this week, Britain's Financial Services Authority announced a review into whether Barclays
-- along with other banks -- had inappropriately foisted interest rate hedging products on small businesses. There are also lingering questions about whether Barclays broke the rules when it took massive cash infusions from Qatar's sovereign wealth fund in 2008. Qatar's 6.1 billion pound investment helped Barclays avoid having to ask for a U.K. government bailout, but in July the bank acknowledged that regulators were checking whether Barclays had properly disclosed fees it had paid as part of the fundraising drive. Far more dramatic was the revelation that senior executives Barclays were involved in a campaign to rig a key interest rate known as the LIBOR. The rate-fixing drive was intended to make Barclays appear healthier than it really was, but because the LIBOR sets benchmarks for hundreds of trillions of dollars of contracts globally, its effects would have been felt across the financial industry
-- including loans, pensions, and mortgages. Barclays' role in fiddling the rate led to a $453 million fine and the resignation of a slew of executives, including Jenkins' predecessor as chief executive, Bob Diamond.
[Associated
Press;
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